Posts Tagged ‘Books’

Back in June, I was extended an offer from PACKT Publishing to review a new VMware book. I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment but it sounded like an easier read and I appreciated the offer as well as the accommodation of my request for paperback in lieu of electronic copy so I accepted. I finished reading it this past weekend.

The book’s title is VMware vCenter Cookbook and it is PACKT’s latest addition to an already extensive Cookbook series (Interested in Docker, DevOps, or Data Science? There’s Cookbooks for that). Although it was first published in May 2015, the content isn’t quite so new as its coverage includes vSphere 5, and vSphere 5 only with specific focus on vSphere management via vCenter Server as the title of the book indicates. The author is Konstantin Kuminsky and as I mentioned earlier the book is made available in both Kindle and paperback formats.

Admittedly I’m not familiar with PACKT’s other Cookbooks but the formula for this one is much the same as the others I imagine: “Over 65 hands-on recipes to help you efficiently manage your vSphere environment with VMware vCenter”. Each of the recipes ties to a management task that an Administrator of a vSphere environment might need to carry out day to day, weekly, monthly, or perhaps annually. Some of the recipes can also be associated with and aid in design, architecture, and planning although I would not say these are not the main areas of focus. The majority of the text is operational in nature.

The recipes are organized by chapter and while going from one to the next, there may be a correlation, but often there is not. It should be clear at this point it reads like a cookbook, and not a mystery novel (although for review purposes I did read it cover to cover). Find the vCenter how-to recipe you need via the Table of Contents or the index and follow it. Expect no more and no less.

Speaking of the Table of Contents…

Chapter 1: vCenter Basic Tasks and Features

Chapter 2: Increasing Environment Availability

Chapter 3: Increasing Environment Scalability

Chapter 4: Improving Environment Efficiency

Chapter 5: Optimizing Resource Usage

Chapter 6: Basic Administrative Tasks

Chapter 7: Improving Environment Manageability

It’s a desktop reference (or handheld I suppose depending on your preferred consumption model) which walks you through vSphere packaging and licensing on one page, and NUMA architecture on the next. The focus is vCenter Server and perhaps more accurately vSphere management. Fortunately that means there is quite a bit of ESXi coverage as well with management inroads from vCenter, PowerShell, and esxcli. Both Windows and appliance vCenter Server editions are included as well as equally fair coverage of both vSphere legacy client and vSphere web client.

Bottom line: It’s a good book but it would have been better had it been released at least a year or two earlier. Without vSphere 6 coverage, there’s not a lot of mileage left on the odometer. In fairness I will state that many of the recipes will translate identically or closely to vSphere 6, but not all of them. To provide a few examples, VM templates and their best operational practices haven’t changed that much. On the other hand, there are significant differences between FT capabilities and limitations between vSphere 5 and vSphere 6. From a technical perspective, I found it pretty spot on which means the author and/or the reviewers did a fine job.

I’m not promoting this on Twitter – Let’s see who actually reads my blog on a Monday morning or at least still employs RSS technology.

A short while ago, I received on my doorstep a copy of Scott Lowe’sMastering VMware vSphere 5. I’ve already got my own copy and I’d like to make sure this book ends up in the hands of someoneone who:

A) needs a copy

B) will read it and put the tremendous knowledge it contains to good use

C) won’t ask me for an electronioc handheld version

Respond in the comments section below on 1) your role and 2) your thoughts and/or opinions (good or bad) of VMware’s endeavors into both Software Defined Storage and Software Defined Networking. The 5th response snags the copy which I will mail to you. Good luck and thank you for your feedback.

Update 5/20/12: Thank you for the responses. It’s good to see so many people attentive on a Monday.

I expect anyone could argue that the first response from Andy wasn’t an actual opt-in response for the contest, nor did it conform to the contest rules. This creates a problem because whether or not I include Andy’s comment means either Miguel or Kris are winners. The easiest way to settle this is to declare you both winners. Send me an email detailing your full mailing address and each of you will receive a copy of Mastering vSphere 5 by Scott Lowe.

The big splash was officially made yesterday but I’m following up with my announcement a day later to help spread the message to anyone who may have been heads down and missed it. Forbes Guthrie (), Scott Lowe (), and Kendrick Coleman () have teamed up to produce VMware vSphere Design 2nd Edition (a followup refresh of the popular 1st Edition).

As Technical Editor, I’m one of the few fortunate individuals who have already had the pleasure to have read the book. I can tell you that it is jam-packed with the deep technical detail, design perspective, and methodology you’d expect from these seasoned and well-respected industry experts.

The book is 528 pages in length (compare to 384 pages in the 1st edition). New in this version is coverage of vSphere 5.1, emerging infrastructure technologies and trends, as well as a section on vCloud Director design – a worthy topic which should be weighing heavily on the minds of many by now and in the future will likely spawn dedicated coverage in texts by Sybex and/or other publishers.

The publisher has made the introduction section of the book freely available. You can take a look at that by clicking this link which is hosted at Forbes vReference blog. As with the previous edition, this book is made available in both paperback and Kindle editions. Support these authors and pick up your copy today. Tell them Jason sent you and nothing special will likely take place.

I’m long overdue on book reviews and I need to start off with an apology to the authors for getting this one out so late. The title is VMware vSphere 5 Building a Virtual Datacenter by Eric Maillé and René-François Mennecier (Foreword by Chad Sakac and Technical Editor Tom Keegan). This is a book which caught me off guard a little because I was unaware of the authors (both in virtualization and cloud gigs at EMC Corporation) but nonetheless meeting new friends in virtualization is always pleasant surprise. It was written prior to and released at the beginning of September 2012 with vSphere coverage up to version 5.0 which launched early in September 2011.

The book starts off with the first two chapters more or less providing a history of VMware virtualization plus coverage of most of the products and where they fit. I’ve been working with VMware products since just about the beginning and as such I’ve been fortunate to be able to absorb all of the new technology in iterations as it came over a period of many years. Summarizing it all in 55 pages felt somewhat overwhelming (this is not by any means a negative critique of the authors’ writing). Whereas advanced datacenter virtualization was once just a concatenation of vCenter and ESX, the portfolio has literally exploded to a point where design, implementation, and management has gotten fairly complex for IT when juggling all of the parts together. I sympathize a bit for late adopters – it really must feel like a fire hose of details to sort through to flesh out a final bill of materials which fits their environment.

From there, the authors move on to cover key areas of the virtualized and consolidated datacenter including storage and networking as well as cluster features, backup and disaster recovery (including SRM), and installation methods. In the eighth and final chapter, a case study is looked at in which the second phase of a datacenter consolidation project must be delivered. Last but not least is a final section titled Common Acronyms which I’ll unofficially call Chapter 9. It summarizes and translates acronyms used throughout the book. I’m not sure if it’s unique but it’s certainly not a bad idea.

To summarize, the book is 286 pages in length, not including the index. It’s not a technical deepdive which covers everything in the greatest of detail but I do view it as a good starting point which is going to answer a lot of questions for beginners and beyond as well as provide some early guidance along the path of virtualization with vSphere. The links above will take you directly to the book on Amazon where you can purchase a paperback copy or Kindle version of the book. Enjoy and thank you Eric and René-François.

VMware Press, the official publisher of VMware books and training materials, has launched a 60 day Facebook sweepstakes beginning May 1 and running through June 30th. Prize offerings include a $100 Amazon gift card and three VMware Press books of the winner’s choice; nine second prize winners will win an eBook of their choice. Good luck – enter now at the link below!

Cody Bunch over at ProfessionalVMware has pulled together a whole bunch of fantastic lab resources which he plans to give away to one lucky contest winner at the BrownBag Blow Out – vSphere Lab Give Away. This is a great opportunity to walk away with books, videos, 1×1 VCAP training, storage, laptop PC, VMware Workstation, VMware exam vouchers, a brand new v3 vCalendar from you-know-who, and maybe more (I hear Cody has a book coming…)

Contest Rules:

1) Create and send a 1 – 3 minute video, explaining who you are and how you think the lab would help you.

I assume you follow Duncan and Frank and read their blogs, but in case you don’t, check out this Crazy Black Friday / Cyber Monday deal!Between now and Monday 11:59pm PST, prices are slashed on Frank and Duncan’s ebook vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive.

If you’re serious about vSphere 5, you need this book in your technical library. Even if you’re already a seasoned vSphere expert, there are some major changes in the features which Duncan and Frank deepdive on. Tis the season for giving so if you already have a copy for yourself, take advantage of these prices to pick up another copy for your favorite co-worker, employee, manager, spouse, or child. Now is as good a time as any to get the young ones started on VMware virtualization.